There were rumors about what the king had done to the midwife, Agnes, after his wife’s death. The palace staff and the royal guard whispered about it amongst themselves and grew even warier of Banruud. Ghost already knew to be wary of him and tried not to dwell on the day when he would come back.
The old queen was indulgent, and Dagmar had convinced her that the princess should attend lessons with the temple daughters. Whenever Alba visited, the girls greeted her with curtsies and bowed heads, but Alba embraced them with such enthusiasm and delight that they bloomed in her presence. Ghost bloomed in her presence. Each day was an awakening, a rebirth, and sometimes her joy was so intense, she thought her heart would break.
When it all became too much, Ghost would seek Dagmar and his quiet companionship. He was often stooped over scrolls, a quill in hand, turning one language into another, one man’s writings into his own, but he would greet her with a smile and she would tuck herself nearby and let his presence calm the exquisite agony in her chest. Often, they never spoke at all, and Ghost would simply slip away when she could breathe again.
The Highest Keeper placed meaning in everything, from the contributions of a field mouse to the formation of the clouds in the sky, and Ghost became aware of things she had never thought about before. She was included in the education of the young supplicants, and she learned the prayers and practiced the incantations with an intensity that raised Ivo’s brows and the corners of Dagmar’s lips. Her fingers were always stained with ink and her eyes were often slightly dazed, deep in thought even when she performed her daily chores. She opened herself to the temple the way the temple had been opened to her, and her enthusiasm for learning was an example to the girls she’d been tasked to care for.
The clan daughters, as they were loosely called, were more similar than they were different—all young, all afraid, all female, all forsaken, with needs and desires and a sense of loss that permeated the temple walls. The keepers who had come to the temple as supplicants had all come of their own accord, knowing the life they chose. Even Ghost had chosen the temple over the sheep, and over leaving Saylok altogether. The clan daughters had been brought against their will, and they were unified in that reality. But each girl brought her own footprint to the temple grounds, and as time passed and fear abated, their differences became more obvious.
Juliah from Joran had been raised to battle, and she was constantly drawing Bayr into combat. She would jump from behind doors or spring from the rafters overhead, light as a cat, and try to catch him off guard. He bore her aggression well, the way he bore everything else. Dagmar had rubbed off on the boy; they were both unflappable and focused, introspective and observant, and instead of rebuffing her need for confrontation, he absorbed it, teaching her as he took her abuse, giving back enough that she sharpened her skill without breaking her bones.
The girl from Joran was not the only one who bubbled over in aggression, though where Juliah was action, Liis of Leok was a simmering pot. Her silence was a weapon, and she used it with considerable effect. So it came as a great surprise when one day, as the sun surrendered the day to the moon and the keepers were gathered in praise, Liis suddenly broke out in song with them, her voice piercing the air the way her silence usually deflated the room. She sang the song of supplication, the one most commonly raised in evening worship.
Mother of the earth be mine, father of the skies, divine.
All that was and all that is, all I am and all I wish.
Open my eyes to see, make me at one with thee,
Gods of my father and god of my soul.
Give me a home in hope, give me a place to go,
give me a faith that will never grow cold.
Her voice was crystalline and cutting, sitting above the tenor tones of the complacent keepers. It grew and climbed and carved a hole into the hearts of all who listened. The voices raised in habit became voices hushed in awe. Liis sang as though she cursed each word for making her ache, and the tears she wouldn’t cry streamed from the eyes of the little girls who’d cried too much, from the eyes of the keepers who hadn’t cried enough, and from Ghost herself, who only cried when she was alone.
If Liis made them weep, Bashti made them laugh. She had an uncanny gift for mimicry—her impression of Ivo had the girls covering their mouths and ducking their heads into their robes, so they wouldn’t be caught howling with laughter inside the sanctum when they were supposed to be meditating. Bashti didn’t like to meditate. She liked to imitate. It only took her a few minutes in someone’s presence to lock in on their idiosyncrasies and speaking patterns. She mocked the king, the Highest Keeper, several of the brothers, and even Ghost, who took the ribbing with a delighted smile and a question: “I do that?”
Bashti could mimic the way Keeper Dieter teared up whenever he talked and the way Keeper Lowell spoke out of one side of his mouth. She even mocked the other girls and Princess Alba, though not mercilessly. The only person she was not allowed to impersonate was Bayr. She started to do so one afternoon, trying out an impression of the boy that was eerily apt and particularly brutal, stumbling with her words even as she puffed out her chest to indicate his strength.
Alba grew perfectly still, her eyes locked on Bashti’s humor-filled face, and seconds later she was hurtling across the room, hands curled, arms extended, murder in her eyes.
“Never do that again,” she said, clamping her hands over Bashti’s gaping mouth. “Ever. Ever. You will not laugh at Bayr.”
The room grew silent, and Bashti’s eyes filled with tears. Bayr straightened from his position at the door and hurried to subdue his charge. The teasing hadn’t bothered him—he’d been laughing along with the others. He wrapped his large hands around Alba’s small wrists and pulled her hands from Bashti’s mouth. He smiled at the girl and patted her head, as if to apologize for Alba. Then he took Alba by the hand and led her away. Alba had thrown a look of warning over her shoulder as she left the room.
“Never. Ever,” she said again.
The next time Bayr brought Alba back for lessons, Ghost noticed that Alba embraced Bashti longer than usual, patting her back in apology, and she never spoke of the incident again. She never had to. For someone so small, Alba had a great deal of influence.
Dalys, the youngest of the five, was a year older than Princess Alba, but unlike Alba she’d had no formal lessons at all. Where Alba was confident, she was meek; where Alba excelled, she struggled. She shrank from any attempts to learn until Alba began to teach the girl herself, the way the queen had once taught her. Paints were hard to procure, so one of the keepers taught them how to make their own, and Alba helped Dalys create an alphabet that came alive in pictures drawn around letters, and letters combined into words. The words became a story that Dalys began to tell, and before long, Alba’s gifts became Dalys’s.
And Alba was truly gifted. She remembered everything as though she held pictures in her head, and she could describe—and re-create—the smallest thing with great detail. The keepers had grown very careful with their lessons when the princess was present.
Dagmar taught the daughters their first rune, an elementary drawing of a sun with seven beams radiating from it, six for the clans and one more that extended straight down, much longer than the others. He explained it was a conduit for happiness and understanding. The sun, in her golden generosity, did not want her children living in darkness. The girls used spittle to draw the rune instead of blood. Dagmar claimed it was the closest thing to it, and each girl placed their fingers in their mouths, wetting them before copying the simple depiction that faded on the dark stone almost as soon as it was created.